Union Debate Research Articles

Medical Reminiscences

Medical ReminiscencesNB as has been said in different contexts,recollections may differ but the followingare my memoriesTell us a little of your time as a student atGlasgow University.I was a medical student at GlasgowUniversity from 1957-1963. My memory isthat the proportion of women in the yearwas restricted to 1/3 of the 160 students inthe year. The six year course allowed us timefor long student vacations which I used tothe full; travelling one year to work as aclinical clerk in Copenhagen and anotheryear with the National Union of Studentswhen 20 of us went as a student delegationto Russia visiting Moscow Leningrad andKiev. Fascinating insights into Russianmedicine and state control.I enjoyed a full student life being involved inthe students union. At that time there wereseparate unions for men and women: QueenMargaret for women and the Union for men.We mixed very comfortably after 5pm andstudent union debates were a highlight. Itwas a golden age of student politics andstudent debates with gifted orators such asDonald Dewar, John Smith, Neil McCormickand Jimmy Gordon sharpening their skills.Tell us a little of your career and why youchose the specialty you did.I chose dermatology and in particular workon malignant melanoma because of apatient I encountered doing my surgicalpre registration house officer post. Mr Xwas a Pakistani seaman who had beenadmitted because of secondary melanomaerupting in nodules all over his left legfrom toe to thigh but with no obviousspread beyond the inguinal ligament. Mr Xspoke no English and interpreters were notavailable. It was very clear that thesurgeons in charge of the ward did notknow how to manage the problem or howto communicate with the patient. This tookme to general study of melanoma and itstreatment, to tumour immunology and topatient support and communication.Can you share some of highlights of yourcareer?60 years on we know a lot more aboutappropriate treatment of melanoma andstaging procedures. We are now muchmore aware of the need for patientsupport and information with supportgroups for most skin diseases egMelanoma Action, the PsoriasisAssociation and the national EczemaSociety; all groups who offer accurateinformation to patients and also raisefunds for research.From 1978-2000 I was professor ofdermatology and established aninternationally recognised departmentwhich attracted trainees from overseas Canada, Australia and New Zealand. What would you say to your medicalstudent self?I would continue to encourage myselfto take full advantage of the freedomof student years and travel widely. Youwill never be so free again.What would you say to the medicalstudents today?The current situation for students isvery different. I would howeverencourage them to try to take part inuniversity wide events and societiesand not confine themselves to medicalschool activities. Clerkships andelectives overseas give valuable insightinto the organisation of medical careelsewhere.And enjoy yourselves

대학 토론대회 운영 현황 및 시사점

Debate, regarded since ancient Greece as one of the important activities for cultivating critical thinking and communication skills, has become more important in modern civil society and democratic society. University debate competitions in Korea expanded in the late 1970s starting with the university union debate competition. However, in the early days, the grammatical form of discussion was emphasized rather than the strength of critical thinking and communication skills. Debate clubs or debate competitions were organized in each university in the mid-1990s, and by the 2000s, the quality of the debate competitions was high. Debate competitions for university students nationwide have also become more diversified. Busan National University, Sookmyung Women’s University, Chungnam National University, Chungbuk National University, Dankook University, and Pukyong National University are representative universities that have held on-campus debate competitions for more than 10 years. Among them, we would like to conduct a comparative analysis by selecting three universities that are historically and educationally representative while presenting an advanced model for on-campus debate competitions as universities that have held such competitions for more than 10 years. As a result, this paper aims to analyze the current status of on-campus debate competitions at Busan National University, Sookmyung Women’s University, and Chungnam National University and to explore implications for university education. In order to analyze the current status of the university's in-school discussion competitions, in this study interviews were conducted with practitioners of reading discussion competitions at each university and a content analysis method of discussion competition data posted on their websites was performed. The status survey can provide several improvements such as enhancing the understanding of university discussion competitions, reminding the importance of discussions in university education, and reaffirming educational implications.

Branch life: negotiating national and local activism in UCU

Two members of the King&'s College London branch of the University College Union (UCU) discuss the union's long-running national dispute over the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), as well as more local disputes they have been involved with at the College level. Their actions over conditions within King's - including on equalities issues, specifically child care issues, London weighting and institutional democracy - illustrate how a branch can link up local disputes with national disputes, making them more concrete and specific, and seeking to create an institution that has a local form of democracy running through it. They also discuss how union debate and action has expanded during the period of the dispute: the union, both nationally and locally, has taken up issues of precarity and casualisation; pay gaps and structural inequalities; workloads; and questions of decolonisation. At King's, the union are negotiating for free childcare support for all staff, available on the same basis for everyone, as part of a wider collective agreement with the college on all issues of pay and conditions of employment. They have also sought to democratise the Council - the decision-making body of the College - partly through drawing attention to the increasing number of corporate figures who sit on the Council, including its chair, Lord Geidt. As well as increasing involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a radicalising of the branch's activities on imperialism, including calling attention to the role of the college in imperialism, and demands to demilitarise both the USS and the university itself.

Counting the ‘Cavaliers’: Two Contemporary Analyses of the Political Wing of the Scots Jacobite Underground in the Union Parliament1

AbstractUnderground movements are understandably reluctant to record the names and numbers of their adherents because any such compilation is manifestly a hostage to fortune. Hence very few lists of politically active Jacobites actually compiled by the Jacobites themselves have survived to the present day. In the French foreign ministry archives at La Corneille, however, there is a rare and previously unknown/unused example of such a list. ‘The Rolls of Parliament as they stand’, is a classic printed, marked list of all the lords entitled to sit in, and commissioners elected to, Queen Anne's Union Parliament. It identifies the political allegiances of the great majority of the sitting commissioners and peers, and in particular the Jacobites among them. Rather better known, yet hitherto seldom consulted or used, is a debriefing document describing the political alignment of a great many of those in parliament and the general political inclination of their constituents written by Captain Harry Straton for the Jacobite King James III and VIII in August 1706. These two sources are the basis of the analysis that follows. The focus is on what these two Jacobite analyses of the state of Scotland and Scottish politics can tell us about the political dynamics of the Scottish Parliament and the country more broadly on the eve of the Union debates.

The Subject of Britain 1603–25 by Christopher Ivic

Reviewed by: The Subject of Britain 1603–25 by Christopher Ivic Andrew Hiscock The Subject of Britain, 1603–25. By Christopher Ivic. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2020. x+ 242 pp. £80. ISBN 978-0-7190-8870-4. Christopher Ivic's monograph is a very readable study and a timely corrective to received critical thinking inherited down the generations (and endlessly recycled) concerning Jacobean succession literature. Drawing itself explicitly into the lively scholarly debate relating to early modern formulations of what has been termed more recently the British nations or Archipelagic studies, Ivic's enquiry explores 'the complex and often contradictory ways in which the heterogeneous writing of Britain' might be understood and how these interventions introduced 'new ideologies and new ways of thinking about collective and individual identities within the context of the island's increasingly intersecting and intermingling peoples and [End Page 123] cultures' (p. 3). The first chapter concentrates on responses in 1603 to James VI/I's accession from a host of sources, and the following chapter builds on this discussion, analysing the panegyrics surrounding the Stuart king's arrival in London, paying particular attention to 'occasional texts' by Drayton, Daniel, and Jonson. The third chapter is in many ways the strongest and most revelatory in this study, focusing on print and manuscript union tracts and treatises, leading to a sensitive re-evaluation of Francis Bacon's role as counsellor/pragmatist (often angling for promotion) and making deserved space for a consideration of David Hume of Godscroft's De Unione Insulae Britannicae Tractatus (first published 1605) and 'De Unione Insulae Britannicae Tractatus Secundus' (unpublished). Ivic points out that Bacon was one of the few common-law lawyers in the Commons to support James's project of political union, which won support elsewhere among MPs in the Lords: 'Like Hume, Bacon sees a potential union as a Machiavellian occasione' (p. 135). The sequence of chapters is brought to a close with a study of Macbeth in the context of the Anglo-Scottish union debate. As was mentioned above, one of the key contributions of this study is the way in which it urges the reader to scrutinize received thinking about the critical status and function of so-called 'occasional' texts (that 'Jacobean succession literature was produced in the main by writers of little or no significance' (p. 12)); the 'simple for-or-against binary' (p. 53) of panegyric; and the parameters (or elisions) involved in formulating Brutayne/this Iland/this State/this Kingdome and so on at the turn of the sixteenth century. Apart from ongoing equivocation widely expressed concerning the statehood or political integrity of Ireland and Wales, for example, in these debates, Ivic underlines that James stressed in Basilikon Doron (1603): 'as for the Hielands, I shortly comprehend them all in two sorts of people: the one, that dwelleth in our maine land, that are barbarous for the most part, and yet mixed with some shewe of civilitie; the other, that dwelleth in the Iles, and are utterly barbarous, without any shew of civilitie' (p. 123). The Stuart king's political tract Basilikon Doron, ostensibly a handbook for kingship bequeathed to his son and heir Henry, was published in Scotland in 1599, but on his accession to the English throne in 1603 it was made newly available to London booksellers. James was far from being a solitary voice in this discussion of the matter of Britain. Ivic draws attention to Bacon's correspondence later, in which the Irish are described as 'a people barbarous and not reduced to civility' (p. 136), and goes on to make the more general point that the 'rethinking of group identities [in the period did not] […] include the Gaelic communities of Scotland and Ireland' (p. 4). More broadly, Ivic highlights that the Stuart accession was very far from being inevitable in the minds of many, even though on Elizabeth's death he was the eldest of Henry VII's living descendants. In this debate, figures such as Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton are given very welcome attention and, indeed, could have been afforded even more prominent status for the ways in which they return attention in their writings to...

Cyprus’s relations with Egypt and Israel during the Makarios era: influence of regional disputes, economy, socio-cultural interactions and UN debates

The Makarios era (1960–1977) corresponded with two major regional disputes, with wide implications on international peace and regional politics: the Cyprus issue and the Arab–Israeli conflict. Given that these disputes are still ongoing, this study utilises diverse primary and secondary sources to analyse Cyprus’s relations with Egypt (United Arab Republic) and Israel in the Makarios period, using both political and economic perspectives. The study demonstrates that Cyprus and Egypt’s diplomatic cooperation was built on reciprocal support extended by Nasser towards the Greek Cypriots and Makarios towards Egypt in the Arab–Israeli dispute, especially in international forums such as UN debates. Although Israeli foreign policy did not threaten Cyprus directly, both Cyprus and Egypt considered Turkey a common threat. However, despite the Cypriot government’s pro-Arab stance in the Arab–Israeli conflict, Cyprus had strong relations with both Israel and Egypt concerning the economy, culture, archaeology, medicine, and telecommunications.

Party ideologies and UN debates

In this article, I analyze the importance of party ideologies for foreign policy priorities as revealed in the UN General Assembly (UNGA). In doing so, I contribute to an increasing number of studies on the relevance of the partisan theory of public policy for foreign policy making. On the theoretical side, I expect liberal governments to direct more diplomatic efforts towards global development cooperation, that is, the fight against poverty, disease, environmental degradation, and discrimination. By comparison, I argue that the foreign policy of conservative governments emphasizes immediate conflicts and threats to national sovereignty. On the empirical side, I present the statistical analysis of all plenary speeches held by the representatives of 38 stable democracies before the UNGA between 1993 and 2016. My empirical analysis reveals that liberal, internationalist governments are significantly more engaged in UNGA debates on global development cooperation, whereas conservative governments allocate more speaking time to debates on the international law and institutions, including issues of national sovereignty. These results are confirmed when zooming in to UN General Debates. Importantly, I find that all of these effects are conditional on governing parties commanding substantive majorities in their national parliament.

Parliamentarism in one party: the trade union debate of 1921 in the Bolshevik party as a semi-parliamentary practice

ABSTRACT The Bolshevik trade union debate of 1921 could be seen as a semi-parliamentary practice both in its form and content. Various groups and platforms participated in this discussion, using it as a tribune for spreading their views among the members of the party. This article examines the course of the discussion in the Petrograd party organization: especially, its form, representation, and the conflicts that it produced. Petrograd Bolsheviks saw the discussion not only as a space for a free circulation of opinions but also as a place for propaganda and political conflict. During debates, both of the rival platforms in the city (the supporters of Vladimir Lenin and the supporters of Lev Trotskii) tried to impugn the actions of each other. The party press also acted not as an impartial observer of the controversy but actively formatted a vision of the domination of Lenin’s adherents in the discussion. Such a process brought discussions in the Bolshevik party close to the practice of a parliamentary debate, and produced a situation that I term ‘semi-parliamentarism in one party’.

Investigating Health Systems in the European Union: Outcomes and Fiscal Sustainability

Healthcare systems aim to provide access to good quality care, while ensuring equity and solidarity. The fiscal sustainability of healthcare systems has become a matter of concern in recent European Union (EU) debates, considering the ever increasing need for adequate healthcare determined by factors such as aging population, investments in technology and infrastructure, medical products and wages. Our paper seeks to measure the health system performances of the EU countries by building up a composite index, which will then be used as a tool in investigating the relationship between health performance and the fiscal sustainability of health systems. A principal components analysis (PCA) was applied to build the composite index through the use of the most relevant health indicators provided by Eurostat and the Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. The composite index offers a comprehensive performance assessment and provides a clear ranking of the EU countries based on their health system performances. Further investigation of the link between health performance and fiscal sustainability revealed that higher ranks are associated with higher shares of health expenditures in gross domestic product (GDP), a large share of employment in the health sector, and higher duration of working life. These patterns are followed by efficient health systems, encountering reduced sustainability risks.

‘Literary Symbols’: Language and Style in the 1707 Union Debates

The pamphlet war which surrounded the debates of the proposed Union between Scotland and England in 1707 has frequently been dismissed as a mere sideshow to the main events that took place in the Scottish Parliament. Until recently, the accepted viewpoint was that as only the landed elites possessed the vote, it was only they who could decide the political destiny of the country – the wider populace was largely an irrelevancy. However, the political speeches of the Scotsman, John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven, and the response to those speeches, by English man of letters, Daniel Defoe, suggests that the poetry and prose generated by these intense debates had a purpose to speak directly to the people, and to galvanise them for a cause, despite their lack of a direct political voice. This article investigates the importance of Belhaven's speeches in an attempt to understand why they had so much resonance with the general public, and the extent to which his opponents attempted to contain his appeal to the people.

Are Musicians “Ordinary Workers”? Labor Organization and the Question of “Artistic Value” in the First Years of the Portuguese Musicians’ Class Association: 1909–1913

This article explores how unionized Portuguese musicians tried to address the paradoxes of their social position in a period marked by the development of the entertainment industries. While considering themselves as being part of the “great army of workers,” the members of the Portuguese Musicians’ Class Association (ACMP) remained strongly attached to the ideal of the symphony orchestra and the notion of musical art as a pure and non-market “spiritual activity.” I argue that the study of union debates can offer new perspectives on the ways musicians have historically, aesthetically, and politically constructed their own representations of what being a “professional musician” is.

The Oxford Union Debate on War in 1933: Rhetoric, Representation, Political Action

This paper shows how a debate conducted in the Oxford Union, the leading student debating society in Britain, was used to make a point about representation and politics in the national press, and what it means in terms of political action and who can be entitled to make political claims. In 1933 the Union debated a motion “That this House will under no circumstances fight for its King and Country”. It was carried by a clear majority, and the scandal it caused called the role of the Union and what it represented into question. It is argued here that there were two rhetorical levels in operation, the rhetoric of representation and the rhetoric of debate. Regarding the former, the Union was blamed in the national press for lacking the representative qualities attributed to it, and regarding the latter, its rules and traditions were defended as part of the functions of a political assembly.

Embedded or Exceptional? Apartheid and the International Politics of Racial Discrimination

My main argument here is that the story seen from the perspective of the influential year of 1962 reveals a very different historical context, with a different set of actors and a different trajectory and causalities regarding the human rights breakthrough, from those stories focusing on Western agency in the 1940s and the 1970s. It repositions the history of human rights in significant ways and makes apartheid and racial discrimination more crucial to the human rights story than has hitherto been acknowledged. It is also important to emphasize that the positions and arguments presented by countries from the Global South in these UN debates were richly nuanced. These nuances are important if we are to fully appreciate the dynamics during these years. Tanzania differed significantly from, for instance, Senegal in the way it envisaged the scope and applicability of international human rights law and investigatory measures. Tanzania wanted a sole focus on Southern Africa and not beyond; Senegal had a wider perspective. This should remind us that when we are imagining Africa as a historical-political space, we need to allow for diversity, individual histories and agency, aspects that cannot be adequately captured by labels such as ›The Third World‹, ›Global South‹ or indeed even ›Africa‹.

Intergenerational Solidarity in the Workplace

Starting from the main criticalities that young and old people meet in contemporary labor markets, this article analyses the principle of solidarity between generations at work, in light of a multidisciplinary (especially sociological) literature. This offers different conceptual lenses for understanding complex relationships in workplaces. They provide different ways to understand micro-level interpersonal relations and macro-level structural forces and the interactions between them, arriving to define which kind of solidarity may be realistically proposed in contemporary labor markets. Then, intergenerational relations are briefly collocated in European Union debate aiming to promote a cohesive society. In the second part, four country cases are presented to demonstrate how the matter of intergenerational relations has influenced recent labor reforms. Following van der Veen, Yerkes, and Achterberg, who found differences in the choice of justice principles and in the level of solidarity preferred by social groups living in different welfare regimes, to reduce the complexity of the analysis, countries belonging to the same welfare regime have been chosen. Finally, measures presented are critically discussed in the more general context of European labor market and social welfare crisis.

United States of Africa: Positioning the Pan-African Parliament and Court in the Political Union Debate

The need to assure greater human security in a world exposed to the dangers of terrorism and civil wars; the necessity of pooling economic endeavour and consolidating markets and generating economic growth in poverty stricken communities; and the imperatives of preserving dwindling resources in a menaced global environment; all these seem to preoccupy many across the globe. For these reasons, among others, the logic of unions of one kind or another, be they sub-regional, regional or continental, dominate contemporary policy debates at national, regional and global levels. Consequently the very suggestion that the dream of a United States of Africa should be afforded further serious consideration is, despite the numerous practical obstacles to its realisation, in itself considered to be a laudable idea.Indeed, this idea of African unity has evolved substantially: from the challenges of newly independent states to the imperatives of continent-wide unity, the transformation in global and continental realities has not necessarily been matched by concomitant institutional infrastructure on the continent. The transition from the much criticised Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU) and its associated programmes such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) was widely celebrated. Nevertheless, the desire for a more appropriate entity that can best confront the challenges of the modern world, arising from perceived inadequacies of the current initiatives, has remained alive. The present debate about the possibility of a United States of Africa is premised on these realities.The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to offer some insights into the challenges inherent in the practical implementation of this idea with respect to two institutions integral to the notion of a United States of Africa, namely the African Parliament and African Court of Justice, and second, to offer some suggestions, informed by comparative experiences of the EU and US, on what reforms may need to be undertaken with respect to these institutions and what other supporting institutional framework would render the dream a reality.

Why Bringing Back Grammar Schools is not Proving a Popular Idea: two successes for the comprehensive argument in recent student union debates

Why Bringing Back Grammar Schools is not Proving a Popular Idea: two successes for the comprehensive argument in recent student union debates

Labour as a transnational actor, and labour’s national diversity as a systematic frame of contemporary competitive transnationality

This paper argues that one strong and still largely uncontested theoretical heritage of mainstream approaches to capitalist diversity, and particularly the varieties of capitalism framework, is the binding of labour’s agency to national institutions and (cultural and ‘mental’) ‘paths’. This has been the main paradigm within political and trade union debates, too, especially in Germany, where the proposal to strengthen ‘typical German institutional advantages’ (namely co-determination) in the face of European and global competition is widespread. After a critical presentation of these approaches, the article proposes, following empirical findings and relying on concepts from the transnational migration literature and the debate in geography on scaling, to analyse local-oriented action by labour as itself being a specific form by which labour’s transnationality is constructed. However, in the cases presented, this specific form of construction turns out to be a competitive one, with ideological frames of cultural and mental divisions in Europe and beyond in systematic use.

Critiquing the heteronormativity of the banal citizen in New Zealand's mediated civil union debate

This article extends Billig's (1995) landmark thesis on banal nationalism by considering how processes of national deixis circumscribe the boundaries of citizenship and forms of belonging within nation-states. Drawing on critical analyses of sexual citizenship, the article provides a discursive analysis of the debate over civil union in the New Zealand mainstream press during 2004–2005. It argues that this mediated debate represented an historical moment where the routine deictic flagging of the nation, and the correlated flagging of the ‘banal citizen’, fundamentally broke down, thereby allowing this unmarked and ‘ordinary’ process to be systematically examined. Four major discourses are identified in press coverage: ‘Homosexual’ subjects as abnormal and disordered, tolerance, equality and human rights, the sanctity of marriage and the preservation of the family (and the social order). Although the passing of the Civil Union Act does mark a (faltering) step forward in sexual equality, we argue that the presence of these discourses suggests that forms of both ontological and cultural heterosexism persist in New Zealand society. Despite the Act conferring new legal rights, ultimately we conclude that the four discourses act to restrict the extent to which ‘homosexual’ subjects are considered ‘valid’ and ‘legitimate’ citizens. In continuing to structure the public politics of sexual citizenship in New Zealand, these discourses have influenced recent debates over legislative moves towards ‘marriage equality’ in ways that raise concerns over the continuation of heterosexist norms, as well as exclusionary forms of homo-nationalism. More generally, this research demonstrates the effectiveness of Billig's work as a valuable and productive analytic lens to explicate concerns over the exclusionary nature of citizenship itself.

Historical Perspectives on the Anglo-Scottish Union Debate: Re-reading the Norman Conquest in the 1610s

SummaryThe article considers the development and the diversity of the understandings of the Norman Conquest in Jacobean England. In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England, and one of his first policies to unify the two kingdoms culminated in failure in face of English opposition. Modern historians have demonstrated that at the heart of this quick collapse lay a constitutional struggle—the English fear of the loss of their sovereignty. Taking this as the vantage point, the article examines a number of historical publications composed by English lawyers in the following decade. The Jacobean period witnessed a significant proliferation of historical literature, and modern historians have stressed that English common lawyers staunchly adhered to a belief in the ancient constitution, a belief in the antiquity of English law that was counter to royal policies. The article demonstrates how the Union debate, despite its eventual collapse, produced unparalleled interest in the meaning of conquest in the 1610s. It also considers the works of civil lawyers in comparison. By comparing the differing accounts of the Norman Conquest, the article ultimately demonstrates the contested nature of James's kingship in England.

A Battlefield of Meanings: The Struggle for Identity in the UN Debates on a Definition of International Terrorism

For nearly forty years, debates on a definition of international terrorism as part of a comprehensive convention have been preoccupying the United Nations. This article challenges conventional approaches referring to divergences in national interests and preferences, or to institutional constraints and national legal traditions, to explain why no definition has been agreed upon. It analyzes the inconclusive debates from a critical perspective and argues that the continuous search for a definition can be understood through the prism of collective identity struggles: the desire to define terrorism is not only the desire to give a precise content to terrorism and, thereby, create the identity of an Other. It is also the desire to create a collective identity, a “Self,” representing and uniting those who oppose terrorism. By applying a discursive understanding of collective identity construction to analyze the UN debates, the article elucidates how strongly the definition of terrorism hinders a common understanding among those who are opposing terrorism. Thereby, the analysis highlights that the demonization of terrorism foremost impedes a homogeneous understanding of a collective Self, ready to confront and define terrorism in the first place.